Situation:

Gold Star Financial Management is hosting a risk management webinar and they are ready to begin sending invites to all of their clients and prospects. One of the advisers, Bill, is placed in charge of planning the webinar and ensuring it goes off without a hitch. Bill is eager to show he can take on this task but is unfortunately up to his eyeballs in other work and has no time to manually send out invites to their entire contact list. Bill remembers GSFM invested in a marketing automation tool but he has no real clue where to begin a workflow, let alone how to maximize its efficacy.

His needs are simple:

Send an email inviting both clients and prospects to sign up for their webinar.

Follow up if there was no response, in case the initial invite was overlooked.

Send a reminder email the day of to those who sign up.

To those who reply to the email at all (accept or decline), send a replay of the event at the conclusion of the webinar.

Solution:

The invite is sent, giving the recipient four options:

Open and accept

Open and decline

Open and do nothing

Does not open

If the invite is open and accepted:

A reminder is scheduled to be sent the day of the webinar

At the conclusion of the webinar, a replay of the event is scheduled to be sent so the recipient can save it or forward it to coworkers

If the invite is opened and declined:

At the conclusion of the webinar, a replay of the event is scheduled to be sent so the recipient in case they declined due to scheduling issues

If the invite is either opened and ignored, or ignored outright:

A reminder invite is scheduled to be sent a week later in case the original got lost in the clutter

If there is again no response, the user is opted out of the workflow

If they register they are sent a reminder the day of and a replay at the conclusion of the webinar

If they decline they are only sent a replay at the conclusion of the webinar

Thanks to the power of marketing automation, Bill was able to set engagement level records for his webinar, gaining praise and admiration from his bosses. It just goes to show, all you need is a jumping off point and marketing automation can be a walk in the park.